I count religion but a childish toy,
And hold there is no sin but ignorance.

These lines are attributed to Christopher Marlowe in early modern reports about his alleged “atheism,” especially the posthumous dossier of accusations known as the “Baines Note” (1593), compiled amid political and religious anxieties in Elizabethan England. Marlowe, a dramatist associated with provocative overreachers (Tamburlaine, Faustus), was under scrutiny shortly before his death in 1593. The phrasing circulates as one of several purported blasphemous opinions imputed to him rather than as a securely located line from a surviving play or poem. As such, the quotation is best understood within the period’s culture of surveillance, informers, and the weaponization of heterodoxy.

Taken at face value, the statement reduces “religion” to a childish plaything and redefines “sin” as ignorance—an aggressively rationalist, even proto-Enlightenment inversion of orthodox moral theology. It implies that moral failure stems not from willful transgression against divine law but from lack of knowledge, education, or understanding. In Marlowe’s orbit, such sentiments resonate with his dramatic fascination with forbidden knowledge and the costs of intellectual ambition. Yet because the words likely come from hostile testimony rather than an authorial text, they also illustrate how Marlowe’s reputation became a symbol of dangerous skepticism: the quote functions as much as a cultural indictment as a philosophical position.